Roxanne (1987)

Roxanne arrives in 1987 with a prosthetic nose, a small Pacific Northwest town, and a screenplay Steve Martin rewrote roughly twenty-five times. The premise is Cyrano de Bergerac relocated to a fire hall, with the poetry replaced by romantic letters and a man who can out-talk anyone in the room. C.D. Bales is athletic, witty, and well-liked. His nose is the single obstacle standing between him and the woman he loves. The film treats this as tragedy, though it plays as comedy.

There is one faint gesture toward the contemporary inner-beauty narrative. C.D. wins Roxanne through his words, and she tells him plainly that it was the letters she fell in love with. This is a centuries-old device, not a modern statement about bodies. The film never interrogates why a large nose should disqualify a man, nor does it extend sympathy to anyone outside its handsome lead. Roxanne's confession that the letters made her feel intelligent and feminine is the closest the screenplay comes to a thesis, and it passes quickly.

Everywhere else the cupboard is bare. Firefighters appear without a whisper of climate anxiety. A bartender, a dimwitted recruit, and a visiting astronomer populate the town without a single line of social commentary. The supporting cast, including a briefly employed Damon Wayans, exists to service the mechanics of the plot and nothing more. There is no economic critique, no racial reckoning, no queer subtext, no neurodivergent coding, no historical revision, and no sermonizing of any kind. What remains is a gentle, well-built romantic comedy that wants only to be liked. It succeeds. The classification is straightforward, and the score sits near the floor.